Relentless, but also calculating: How Abhishek Sharma reiterated his status as India’s most important batting weapon going into the World Cup
It stings Rajkumar Sharma, Abhishek Sharma’s father and childhood coach, when he hears talk of his son being an all-out attack ballbasher. “He always has the team’s interests in mind. There have been times when I have selfishly told him to play more carefully when he is getting to a 50 or 100, but he refuses,” he told The Indian Express last month. “This is a player who built his abilities playing with the red ball. He has spent a long time building his match temperament. He doesn’t just go after every ball without thinking.”
As he went about plundering eight sixes and five fours on his way to a 35-ball 84 in the first T20I against New Zealand in Nagpur on Wednesday, Rajkumar’s words felt like a tale spun by a sentimental loved one. His son was going after the Kiwi bowlers with disdain. Yet, shades of those sentiments felt true in the formation of yet another match-winning contribution from the 25-year-old who has rapidly become the axis on which India’s batting is held together in the shortest format.
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There were smarts to go with the brawn and the relentless hitting. He quickly read the nature of the surface that did not play out like a flat-track belter but instead showed characteristics of being a bit low and slow, with New Zealand’s pacers getting the ball to grip by taking the pace off it. It often foxed the teammates who shared the crease with him. He smartly found his moments to strike, going after bowlers that consistently missed their lengths and went under pressure, but also chose to rotate strike when the ball was not coming onto his bat. When Suryakumar Yadav was finding strokemaking tough, he took on the responsibility of not letting the free flow of runs stop.
Abhishek Sharma also became the fastest to score 5000 T20 runs. (Express Photo by Dhananjay Khedkar)
The 84 runs came to all corners of the ground at a phenomenal striking rate. The first six, a delightful straight drive off an over-pitched ball over Jacob Duffy’s head, set the template. Abhishek bent his knee to balls that stuck low and timed them into the crowd with ease. He cut and flicked and swiped sixes off his hips against both tall spinners like Mitchell Santner and tall pacers like Kyle Jamieson, even as they scrambled speeds and length to turn off the leaky tap of runs. He rode his luck, shrugging off a couple of misfields and a dropped catch, by continuing to go after the balls that came into his radar.
HIGHLIGHTS | India vs New Zealand 1st T20I – Nagpur
By the time New Zealand heaved a sigh of relief, seeing him depart while attempting another heave over long on, their bowlers were left wondering if their execution had been so off the mark as the 150 runs they conceded in 12 overs was making it seem. It had not.
In their recent form, India’s top order is showing signs of greater reliance on the continuation of Abhishek’s extended purple patch going into their defence of the T20 World Cup at home next month. This was his eighth 50+ score since his international debut in July 2024, in which time he is India’s highest-runscorer by a margin of over 300 runs at a strike rate of 190.92. India are currently sweating on the fitness of their next highest accumulator, Tilak Varma.
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But fine knocks, like the one in Nagpur, paper over cracks well. In the past few years, it has been considered a cheat code for India to have Jasprit Bumrah as their strike bowler with the new ball. In the T20 format, they seem to have developed one at the top of their batting too.
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